Spawned a Global Multibillion Industry; Still Going Strong

Over 50,000 British consumers have invested in providing loans to over 100,000 British consumers and small business owners via Zopa since 2005. Lenders have provided £770,000 of their money to their peers, in exchange for an average return of 5 percent.

From Waze to Weather to Citizen Reporting and Beyond

Mobile crowdsourced information is very valuable, but there are different uses for real-time information versus user-generated content that becomes more valuable as it is aggregated, analyzed, and categorized.

Facilitating “Matchmaking” between Individuals for Fun and Profit

Lyft helps individuals who need a ride match up with people who have a car and want to earn a few bucks by giving them rides, a great example of a p2p business. Is there something in this p2p model for your company?

Building a Platform for Participation for a “Peers Inc.” Business Model

Buzzcar is a peer-to-peer car rental company that started in France. Instead of leaving your car in driveway, rent it to a neighbor! Founded by Robin Chase, the co-founder of Zipcar, Buzzcar uses what Robin calls a “Peers Inc.” business model.

BIF-8 was the 8th annual conference held in Providence, RI by the Business Innovation Factory. The format is story-telling punctuated with long networking breaks where random encounters are encouraged. Key themes: transform cities, healthcare, & society.

Social Network Monitoring, Analysis, and Interaction

Radian6 is both a company—a division of Salesforce.com—and a social service platform that delivers social listening and interaction capabilities and, through the Radian6 Social Hub, integrates with Salesforce Service Cloud case and account management.

Monitoring, Analyzing, and Interacting in the Social Cloud

RightNow Social Experience is the social-service component of the RightNow CX suite. It delivers social listening and interaction capabilities and integrates seamlessly with the CX’s case, knowledge, and account management capabilities.

Aggregage Uses Content Curation in an Online Advertising Business Model

Combine bloggers and subject matter curators with SEO, relevancy filters, and social filters to get a new kind of online publishing from Aggregage. Draw audiences in specific business niches through their content curation.

How Pandora Internet Radio Combines Taxonomy, Crowdsourcing, and Personalization to Improve Music Playlists

As is the case with many electronic publishing efforts, Pandora has merged the best of both worlds: a professional taxonomy with the wisdom of the crowds. Professional musicians categorize music, but people can vote on whether certain songs really belong.

Make It Easy for Your Customers to Multi-Post

Do you want customers to contribute content to your Web site? Customers are more likely to post or curate content in an environment that will "automagically" syndicate that comment or posting out to several other sites.